


black ink on white paper

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [41]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Gen, Road Trips, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23620558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Several weeks into his road trip, Steven makes sure to keep up with his mental health.
Relationships: Amethyst & Garnet & Pearl & Steven Universe, Rose Quartz & Steven Universe
Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [41]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523993
Comments: 36
Kudos: 182





	black ink on white paper

Steven futzed about with his phone, trying to find the best place to rest it for his therapy session. He tried balancing it on his half-filled journal, but thought better of it in case he decided he wanted to refer to its pages during the session. He moved the journal to the side on the nightstand, leaving it where he could get to it quickly if needed. He finally leaned his phone against the hotel room’s beige lamp and angled it to center his face in the camera’s view. He always felt a little uncomfortable with this bit, looking at his face blown-up on the screen until Dr. Boverman appeared.

A ding, and Dr. B smiled at Steven, his broad face filling up most of the screen and creasing into a smile. Steven’s image shrank down, disappearing to the corner where he could avoid looking at it more easily.

“Hi there, Steven. How’s your week been?”

Steven settled in, trying to organize his thinking. As usual he landed on the most mundane things first. It was always easier to get started this way.

“Pretty good. I’m in Texahoma. It’s really different from back home.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling to himself. “It’s _hot_! The Dondai’s AC is working overtime just to keep things semi-comfortable. I can still feel the sun beating down on me through the glass, though. And this state is so _huge_! I mean, I got through Delmarva in like three hours. This is day two of Texahoma and I’m still not through yet.”

“Are you liking it? I’ve never been,” said Dr. B.

“I think so. Some of the accents here are kind of a lot to get used to but the people are friendly. There’s not as many vegetarian food options as I’d like but I’ve had some of the best mac and cheese ever here, and I did find one vegetarian barbecue joint that… wow, it was good. Really good.”

“You’re making me hungry!” Dr. B laughed.

Heartened, Steven grinned. He liked this part of his therapy sessions, normal chatting, like he wasn’t someone with a problem ( _a hundred thousand problems_ ) trying to work it out. He wasn’t _friends_ with Dr. B -- he knew that wasn’t how it was supposed to be -- but it felt friendly, and familiar, all the same. He continued.

“Then I wound up on a side road for a couple of hours and saw some real cowboys. And some real cows -- they’re huge in real life! Kind of terrifying, actually! There was this one time when I was a kid that we played cowboys out in the wilderness for a while, Dad and Amethyst and Ruby and me, but I don’t think it was the same. I was mostly going off of comic book cowboys. Still a lot of fun, though.”

Dr. B raised an eyebrow. “Ruby was there, but not Sapphire?”

Steven had been surprised at how quickly Dr. B had picked up on the intricacies of his family. He wasn’t used to human acquaintances knowing that Garnet was a fusion, or that some of his closest friends had previously tried to kill him. It was weird, but nice to not have to explain it freshly every time.

“Yeah. That was when Garnet fell apart about Mom being Pink Diamond.” He sighed. He supposed it was going to be a Rose day, then. He hadn’t been planning on it, but that part about cowboys had pushed him here, somehow. It was always strange to him how so often their therapy sessions took a completely different direction than he’d expected. 

“She fell apart? Does that mean she -- unfused -- willingly? Or it was an accident?”

Steven’s lips thinned into a narrow line. “An accident, I guess. It was pretty awful for her to learn that Mom was such a liar.” He stared up at the ceiling, remembering how Sapphire had dissolved into tears and fled, how Amethyst had held Ruby, how Pearl had looked so ashamed. “That… was a rough day for them.”

“What about for you?”

Steven smiled a little. “You always ask that.”

“Have you noticed how your memories are often framed by how others reacted, instead of yourself?”

Steven fiddled with his hands, fingers twisting around each other. He didn’t look at the screen. “I know. You’ve pointed it out before. I know it’s a pattern.”

“It’s one we can try to unlearn. Or at least take note of. What did that day feel like for you, Steven?”

“Um… really weird, initially. I mean, I had to ask Pearl if she was the one who shattered Pink Diamond because she couldn’t speak about it at all, because Mom ordered her not to, and I only knew to ask because of a dream I had that must have been like an echo from my gem, and Pearl still couldn’t tell me even when I asked her so she had to take me back inside of her gem… it was really trippy. And I had to keep going back through all of her repressed war memories -- you know, Pearl could really use therapy, too -- until finally I got to the one she wanted me to see, and then --”

He took a deep breath, seeing Rose shift back into her Diamond form, towering over him and Pearl. “I knew it was going to be bad. Pearl liked to keep scary stuff from me but she would tell me if I kept asking. For her to not even be able to tell me -- like, she kept slamming her hands over her face so that she couldn’t open her mouth -- come on, that couldn’t be anything good.”

“Did that make things more frightening for you? Was she doing that on purpose?”

“I don’t think she could control it. I think Mom’s order to her was that powerful,” said Steven. “I think it’s a Diamond thing, though at least that’s something I’ve never done.” _You’ve done plenty_ , his brain said, but Steven tried to ignore it. “For example, Mom ordered her playmate Spinel to stay in the garden, and she stayed. For six thousand years. I don’t think there was really a choice involved.” He frowned, waving a hand. “She always did what _she_ wanted.”

“Rose did, you mean.”

“Yeah. Like, why couldn’t she have at least told Garnet? Or Amethyst? The war was over. It wasn’t like she still had a whole army she had to command after the Diamonds attacked. Why not at least tell the people she said she loved? She never told Dad, either. If she had told somebody else, then Pearl wouldn’t have had to carry that secret around for so long. Did she ever think about what that was doing to her?” Steven spat. “Pearl was a _mess_.”

“It sounds like Pearl had a very difficult time dealing with her own role in the war, as well as what your mother asked of her,” said Dr. B gently. “But what about you?”

“Damn it, I’m doing it again!” Steven laughed, but it was one of those laughs that wasn’t really one. “I don’t know. I… I was scared? Pink Diamond was small compared to Blue and Yellow and White, but she was still huge compared to me and Pearl in that memory, and seeing Mom shift from Rose to Pink -- I don’t know if my stomach ever hurt so bad, so suddenly. It was hard to breathe. But I didn’t have time to think about that because suddenly we were back, and I told everyone what I saw.”

“How did you feel after Garnet and Amethyst found out?”

“I just wanted to focus on _them_. Sapphire was so upset, and then Ruby ran off, and Amethyst kept annoying me, trying to cheer me up. I had to fix them, you know? I had to get everything back to normal, everything that Mom had messed up, _again_.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, balling them into fists.

“You were…. How old were you when you found this out?”

“Fourteen,” said Steven, thinking back.

“And who was responsible for the deception?”

“Well, Mom, of course.”

“Why did you feel that you had to fix what she did?”

“No one else was going to do it,” said Steven. He ran a hand over his face, his breathing coming more quickly. He swallowed. “It always had to be me. They needed me. Pearl couldn’t tell anyone until I asked her who shattered Pink Diamond. Garnet wasn’t there and Ruby and Sapphire didn’t know what to do without each other. Amethyst at least tried to talk to me, but… I was too worried about everyone else.”

“How did she try to reach you?” Dr. Boverman asked gently. 

“She kept trying to distract me from looking for Ruby. She took me out for pizza. She straight up asked me how I was doing at one point... but then she stopped asking.” Steven squirmed uncomfortably. “I didn’t really tell her. I wanted her to tell me how _she_ was doing. I didn’t really know how I was doing myself.”

“Do you know now?”

Steven fell silent. He leaned back against the pillows on the bed, taking long breaths. Why was this question always so hard? What was wrong with him, that he didn’t even know how he felt about important things in his own life? 

“No,” he said softly. “It’s like I don’t feel anything -- or I feel everything, when it comes to her.”

Dr. B considered his words, tilting his head to one side and pursing his lips. “What does ‘everything’ feel like?”

Steven buried his face in his hands. “Arrrgh.”

“If this is too difficult right now, we can --”

“No, we’re already here,” Steven muttered. “It’s just --” He struggled for the words, a torrent of them flooding through his mind. His gem hummed. He knew without looking he was glowing pink, his heart starting to race, but at least his body was staying its normal size. He took a few more deep breaths. _Why not. Maybe it won’t be so bad._

“Sometimes I feel so sorry for her,” he whispered through his hands. “The Diamonds used to lock her up and make her cry, sometimes for the stupidest things -- wanting to play with animals, or wanting to be friends with her Pearl. It could have been hundreds of years or longer they locked her away. How do you not feel bad for someone who went through that when they were just trying to be themselves?”

He lifted his head, lowered his pink hands to his lap. Dr. B peered at him sympathetically through the screen. It had frightened both of them the first time he glowed in a session, but slowly they’d worked to a place where Steven could accept it as a sign he was upset, like crying or blushing. His hand formed a clenched fist, then relaxed again, still pink.

“But sometimes I hate her so much,” he breathed. “She took all that pain the Diamonds put on her and she cracked her Pearl in a tantrum. Volley still has a scar on her face from it, and Gems don’t _do_ that, they don’t get scars you can see unless it’s something _incredibly_ bad. Like your _owner_ you were in _love_ with cracking you with a scream. She hurt Volley, she hurt Pearl by making her pretend to shatter her and keep the secret for thousands of years… she lied to Garnet and Amethyst and Dad, she never even thought about telling me the truth, and how many Gems were shattered? How many Gems were corrupted? She hurt _so many_ people. And sometimes I’m scared that I’m just like her -- or worse -- I mean, I’m a _shatterer_ \--”

Tears stung and he blinked them back. His hand swelled, a fist three times its normal size. He stared hard at it, muttering under his breath. _I’m having that scared feeling again. It’s okay to feel scared. It’s not me._

He wiped his eyes with his other hand, trying to focus. _It’s just a feeling that I’m having right now, but it’s temporary. it’s gonna go away. All feelings do._ He flexed his fingers slowly, and the fist shrank back down to normal size, the pink color fading. 

“This is really frightening for you to think about,” said Dr. B in his steady voice. “But you were able to look at yourself starting to glow and swell, and you were able to bring yourself back to a more neutral state. You’re doing really well, Steven.”

Steven gave him a watery smile. “Thanks. I -- it does get easier. I try to think about what you told me. I’m not my feelings, they’re not bigger than me, they do go away eventually. That helps a lot.”

“That’s right,” Dr. B encouraged. “You’re Steven. You have big feelings, but they don’t define you. You can step outside of them and look at them from a safe distance, while still allowing yourself to feel and acknowledge them.”

“Yeah,” said Steven, the tightness in his chest loosening a little. “Yeah.” 

“You brought up the shattering, which we know is one of your triggers. Do you want to carefully investigate it today, or do you want to continue speaking about your mother?”

“I --” He considered. Jasper-focused sessions always left him drained, fragile, usually for days at a time. Sometimes he craved that, needed it badly, needed to let himself feel and accept just what a terrible thing he’d done --

But some days it didn’t feel right to focus on the accident. Sometimes it got in the way of other work. And as he well knew… there was a lot of work to do.

“I don’t think it’s a Jasper day,” he said carefully. “I mean, we _could_ \-- but I think I need to talk more about Mom, today.”

“Okay, let’s keep talking about Rose. What makes you think you might be worse than your mother? You said yourself that many Gems were shattered in the war that she started.”

Steven shrugged. “She’s not the only one who lies. Or hurts people.” He stared past his phone at the blank hotel wall, finding it hard to focus. The wall slipped and blurred. He remembered waves against his waist, a roar in his throat, the way the town seemed so small. He remembered a monster’s agony. _His_ agony.

“What if they hadn’t figured out how to get me out of my meltdown? I could have hurt the town, I could have hurt everyone -- They wouldn’t have been soldiers who got hurt, you know?”

“They did figure out how to help you. You told me yourself that no one in the town and no one in your family was hurt,” said Dr. B. “But it’s true that sometimes we do hurt others -- all of us. What’s important is that we take steps to avoid hurting others when we can. If we still hurt them, by accident or by making an unhealthy choice, we can make amends by changing our behavior to prevent it happening again. Which you’re doing. _Right now._ You are actively working to change your behavior not only to avoid hurting others, but also to avoid hurting _yourself_.”

“I guess,” he said. “It still feels weird to think about protecting myself. I mean, not with my shield or a bubble, but… emotionally. Sometimes I think about the stuff I did to try and help other people, and it would hurt me so _bad_ but I’d just keep _smiling_ … it’s so messed up.” He let out a soft huff of breath. “Can I tell you something? That I never told anyone?” It was funny, given all the terrible things Steven had already told him over the past several months, but it still made him feel better to ask permission. Like he was subconsciously trying to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt Dr. B, telling him about these things. 

Dr. B’s kind eyes watched him. “Of course.” He _always_ said yes.

“Ruby and Sapphire got married just a few days after she found Mom was Pink Diamond. After Pearl and I talked to them they decided to come back together and be Garnet for themselves, not for Mom or for anyone else. And I was so, so happy that everything I did, trying to help Sapphire understand Mom and Pearl, going on the cowboy trip with Ruby, pretending I was okay -- I was so happy that it _worked_. That Garnet was going to come back.”

Dr. B nodded. Steven fidgeted. This part was… embarrassing. But it felt right to say it, here, now, in a hotel room far away from Beach City and Rose Quartz’s memory and his family.

“I cried in the shower for almost an hour on the wedding day,” Steven mumbled. “I walked into the bathroom so excited to put on my tux and officiate the wedding and see everyone _happy_ again, and as soon as I got in the shower I just… I lost it. I didn’t even know why I was crying. I just _did_ , like a little kid, and I was glad that the water was so noisy because it meant that no one would hear me and ask me how I was doing.”

“Why were you glad that no one would ask how you were doing?”

“I don’t know,” said Steven, but he had a guess, one that hurt. He hazarded it. “It’s like… except a few times from Amethyst, no one did ask me how I was doing all week. Not Pearl, not Ruby or Sapphire, not even my _dad_! And when I was crying in the shower, I guess I thought -- maybe the reason they weren’t asking was because I was just really good at hiding it. And that would be okay. That would hurt less than… them not asking because they didn’t even _think_ about asking me.”

For a moment Dr. B was silent. Then he spoke. “It sounds to me like you were trying to take control of the situation,” he said. “If _you_ were good at hiding your feelings, then of course your family wouldn’t ask how you were doing. That would make it your responsibility, your choice: your actions were what _you_ could control.” He adjusted his glasses and leaned in closer to the screen. “Steven, their actions were never your responsibility. It was _their_ responsibility to check in with you, and they failed you at a time you needed support.”

“They just -- they were going through a lot --” he began automatically.

“She was _your_ mother, Steven. The way you felt about her absolutely should have been explored. But your family chose not to reach out to you and help you, whether by mistake or on purpose, and it’s okay to be angry at them about it.”

“I’m not --”

“Steven, you’re glowing again,” said Dr. B, in his calm, neutral voice. 

Steven laughed, a jagged sound, and caught sight of his image in the corner of the screen, pink and luminous and significantly bigger than it had been a moment ago. “I guess I am.”

“How do you feel?”

Deep, careful breaths. Words came, slowly, to the surface of his mind, syllables to rearrange into meaning. “Hurt. Ignored. Mad. Disappointed. With all of them.”

“All of who?”

“Garnet. Amethyst. Pearl. My dad.” His breathing started picking up, faster and faster. “Why didn’t they think that would mess me up?” he cried. “I mean, really, what the hell? Oh hey, Steven, your mom is an intergalactic dictator, she started a war against herself and got thousands of Gems shattered or corrupted! You’ve heard about how bad Homeworld and the Diamonds were for years, but whoops, your mom’s one of them! And now you have to deal with how her lies screwed up all her friends because you’re always the one to deal with her shit! But you’re fine with it, right? You’re Steven! Nothing ever bothers you, right? _Right_?”

He was near sobs now, his breathing ragged, his shoulders shaking. He felt himself growing, the top of his hair brushing the ceiling --

“Steven, I need you to breathe with me,” said Dr. B’s voice, faint from the distance below. “You can do this. Return to your center.”

 _Right, right. You know what to do._ And he _did_ , his eyes falling closed, tears drying on his cheeks as he breathed. _It’s okay to have this feeling. And it will go away._ His hands steadied. The hum in his ears faded, retreating until he heard Dr. B’s voice clearly through the phone.

“Steven?”

He opened his eyes, grabbing at the phone with his normal-sized, non-glowing hand. He let out a quavery laugh. “I -- I feel like I found a sore spot,” he admitted. “But… I think I was able to deal with it a lot better than a few months ago.”

“Absolutely,” said Dr. B warmly. “I can see you’ve been practicing your breathing and your centering techniques. Remember, these tools provide a way to help keep your feelings from harmfully affecting your powers, but the feelings themselves are not the problem.”

“Right.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“The same, but… not so overwhelmed? Mostly just upset that I had to go through that. Alone,” he said. He rubbed his shirt, readjusting it from where it had stretched to accommodate his sudden increase in size. “I wish I could have talked to you a long time ago.”

Dr. B smiled, nodding. “It’s a common sentiment,” he said. “We can’t undo the past, but I’m glad we’re able to speak now.”

“Me too.” He let out a long, rattling sigh. “Ugh. I just wish… I’d known more of this stuff. That it wasn’t okay for my family to act that way. That it was okay to be upset about Mom, and scared that I was gonna be like her. And I wish I’d known there are other ways to fix problems besides trying to make everyone else happy. Maybe sometimes we just need to feel terrible about terrible things.”

“That’s one of the things about being human, Steven. Painful emotions, like fear, or hatred, or sorrow, are important. There are times they absolutely need to be felt and acknowledged, instead of covering them up with band-aids.”

“Or weddings,” he mumbled, remembering his cheerful song about love, a glow bracelet shining between his clasped hands. His eyes pricked with tears he blinked away.

“You were trying to make the problem go away the only way you knew how,” said Dr. B. “And you didn’t have anyone to show you a different way. That isn’t messed up; it’s a coping mechanism for trauma. Your toolbox was very limited, but now you’re working to find ways to deal with those problems that don’t leave you hiding your feelings and not addressing them.” He tilted his head, considering. “From what you’ve told me, that’s something that makes you very different from your mother.”

“I know I’m trying -- I’m working really hard!” And he was, too, wasn’t even a question, he _had_ gotten so much better. But still -- “What if it’s not enough? What if I’m still too much like her?” Steven asked, wincing at the answer he might get back.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Dr. B, and Steven stared at him in surprise. “I want you to know that it’s not the worst thing in the world to have similarities to a family member, even when you dislike or no longer admire them. Being like her in some ways doesn’t mean you can’t make different choices. And even with all of her flaws and mistakes, there may have been some good qualities that you share with her, too. Can you think of any?”

Steven thought, screwing his face up in concentration. “She really did love the Earth. The plants, the mountains, the people… she really did want to save them. Everybody said so… and it’s one of the few things that didn’t turn out to be a lie.”

“And how do you feel about the Earth?”

Steven grinned, the smile a little pained at first, then growing more genuine. “It’s… awesome.” He let out a long sigh, remembering how he’d driven out to eat breakfast at a nearby diner, and in the parking lot -- 

“I saw these amazing birds today on the telephone wires. Uncle Andy gave me a bird guide for my trip… they’re called scissor-tailed flycatchers. They have these incredible tailfeathers and they just look so beautiful when they fly away. I’ve never seen a bird like that before.” He could see them clearly in his mind’s eye, reddish-pink sides, smooth gray and white faces, impossibly long, elegant tailfeathers in black and white. “I think Mom would have thought they were great. And I guess… I guess that’s not such a bad thing to share with her.”

“You don’t have to love her or forgive her. But you don’t have to hate the parts of her that you see in yourself. It’s not bad at all to appreciate natural wonders and wildlife,” said Dr. B. “Send me a picture of these birds! They sound beautiful..” 

“Yeah, I can do that,” said Steven. “”Maybe I’ll see some more of them tomorrow. I should get through Texahoma tomorrow and into Saguaro. Should see some interesting desert stuff.” He felt a small pang at the thought of Cactus Steven, but hoped that seeing other cacti -- content and happy and most importantly immobile -- might ease that particular hurt a little. 

He glanced at the top of his screen and saw with surprise it had already been an hour. “Huh, I guess it’s that time already.”

“I expect a full report of your trip next week,” said Dr. B, pulling out his calendar. “What day works for you?” 

Steven flipped through his calendar app quickly, scrolling past his next date with Connie -- only two days to go! -- a visit to Lars, and a planned video chat with Peridot. He swiped back to Dr. B. “How about Thursday? Ten AM? Next week’s actually pretty full up with friend stuff. And --” He hesitated, then continued. “It’s been a while since I talked to Dad and the Gems, but I’m thinking I might hold off on a video call for another week. Just… we talked about a lot today. I need to think about stuff for a while before I talk with them again.”

“I think that sounds like a good idea to take some time to yourself to process things,” said Dr. B. “It’s perfectly okay to let them know you’re busy this week but will be in touch again soon.”

“I think I will.”

“I’m glad to hear you have some other friend meetups planned, though. Lars and Connie?”

“Good guesses,” said Steven, giving him a tired smile. “Yeah, I think it’s gonna be a good week. I’ll keep up with my meditation and my journal. Gotta get back on the exercise train, though. It’s been so hot I haven’t felt like it.”

“Take care of yourself, Steven. Don’t forget about swimming or yoga as low-impact options. Feel free to call before your visit if anything changes, and we’ll talk next week.” Dr. B waved, and Steven waved back as the call ended.

He sent Dr. B a picture of the scissor-tailed flycatchers, smiling to himself, then sent the same picture to Uncle Andy and Greg. Maybe he’d really talk to Dad again in a week or two, just… not yet.

He flopped back onto the bed, letting his arms splay out to the side, his fingers uncurling, the tension slowly starting to fade from his arms and shoulders and toes. 

He closed his eyes. How did he feel?

He asked himself after every session, another of Dr. B’s ideas to help him understand himself better. Some days it was hard and he’d end up not answering his own question in a defensive huff. Other days it was clear and easy. He never knew which it would be until he asked it.

This wasn’t the first time messed up things with the Gems had come to light in these sessions. Oh, no, there were a _lot_ of sessions about some of those patterns. He supposed that that was why he’d finally thought about that week they’d learned about Rose, and realized how screwed up it was in so many ways.

He could still feel the emotions that had come up a few minutes ago, but instead of roiling frantically under the surface, they were a little more removed, fading to a more comfortable distance where he could feel them without _drowning_ in them. He rolled over and grabbed his journal from the bedside table, and wrote with the fancy fountain pen Connie had given him until ink smudged his fingertips and his wrist was tired. The pages were smeared, but he wasn’t sure he needed to reread them; just writing it all out was comfort enough right now. Anger and sadness and disbelief, set in black ink on white paper.

His emotions were real. They stared back at him in cursive on narrow-ruled lines. And it was okay to have them, even when they hurt. Something he reminded himself of every week.

 _How do I feel?_ he asked himself again.

_I feel…_

Deep breaths, tidal, falling into a comfortable, familiar rhythm. He had an answer today.

_I feel okay._

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  The scissor-tailed flycatcher is a real bird. Also, I headcanon that Uncle Andy is an avid birder and talks Steven's ear off about birds all the time.
> 
> Also, because multiple people have commented on it: just because Steven says something about Rose doesn’t mean it’s true canonically. Steven is assuming that Rose had a Diamond ability to control Pearl and Spinel’s actions because he distrusts Rose and thinks the worst of her in most situations. He also knows that he and Rose share a destructive ability with voice already. Is he right? Maybe, maybe not. This story isn’t about Rose and Diamond decrees though — it’s about Steven trying to work through feelings regarding the gems and Rose’s effects on them and himself. If we want to talk meta about whether or not Diamonds CAN do that to other characters or whether Pearl and Spinel had free will, hit me up on tumblr ;)


End file.
